Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CYNTHIADES: TO CYNTHIA ON HER LOOKING-GLASS, by FRANCIS KYNASTON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CYNTHIADES: TO CYNTHIA ON HER LOOKING-GLASS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Give me leave, fairest cynthia, to envy
Last Line: To give life to a glass, as make me stone.
Subject(s): Beauty; Love; Mirrors


GIVE me leave, fairest Cynthia, to envy
Thy looking-glass far happier than I,
To which thy naked beauties every morn
Thou showest so freely, while thou dost adorn
Thy richer hair with gems, and neatly deck
With oriental pearls thy whiter neck,
Which take the species of thy naked breast --
So white, I doubt if it can be exprest
By the reflection of the purest glass,
Which swans, snows, ceruses doth so surpass,
As in comparison of it, these may
Rather than white, be termed hoar or gray:
Besides, all whites but thine may take a spot,
Thine, the first matter of all whites, cannot:
Maybe thou trusts thy glass's secrecy
With dainties, yet unseen by any eye:
All these thy favours I will well allow
Unto my rival glass; but so, that thou
Wilt not permit it justly to reflect
Thy eye upon itself: I shall suspect,
And jealous grow, that such reflex may move
Thee (fair Narcissus like) to fall in love
With thine own beauty's shadow: Love's sharp dart
Shot 'gainst a stone may bound, and wound thy heart:
Which if it should, alas! how sure were I
To be past hope, and then past remedy.
This to prevent, may'st thou when thou dost rise,
Vouchsafe to dress thy beauties in my eyes.
If these shall be too small, may, for thy sake,
Hypochondriac melancholy make
My body all of glass, all which shall be
So made, and so constellated by thee,
That as in crystal mirrors many a spot
Is by infection of a look begot,
This glass of thine if thou but frown, shall fly
In thousand shivers broken by thine eye:
Since then it hath this sympathy with thee,
Let me not languish in a jealousy,
To think this wonder may be brought to pass,
Thy fair looks may inanimate thy glass,
And make it my competitor: 'tis all one
To give life to a glass, as make me stone.





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